


Expanding Anomalies

by Britpacker



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Alternative romance, M/M, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-06 16:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10338494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: A very different romance develops as Enterprise crosses the Expanse





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> Because my only bugbear with the otherwise brilliant storyline of Season 3 is that Trip/T’Pol thing – and yes, I know, it’s a biggie. I’m sure it was intended as a star-crossed romance but it came off, from my sofa at least, more as a desperate, drug-and-grief fuelled approaching train wreck…

This was in danger of becoming a very bad habit.

For the second late-night running Malcolm Reed clambered over the threshold of the observation lounge to find his friend and colleague Charles Tucker the Third slumped over a table, chin propped on steepled fingers as he scowled down on a scattered selection of PADDS. 

Mute nods took the place of a formal greeting while the armoury officer called up his usual hot black tea and swayed around the soft furnishings to sit facing the chief engineer. “Any progress?”

“Isaac Newton couldn’t figure this mess out.” Gloomily the Southerner pushed a hand through his ruffled blond hair. “How’re the weapons?”

“Hovering somewhere between a sulky toddler and an operatic diva, but I don’t think they’re going to fire at our own arse overnight.” Closing his heavy eyes the lieutenant took a long, slow pull of tea, strangely invigorated by its scorch against the delicate tissues of his throat. “And I daren’t leave the torpedoes armed in safe mode. Not with the Osarians about.”

Tucker harrumphed softly. “We come lookin’ for the Xindi and what do you know? We find us a bunch of pirates instead. Like I said, just paint that giant bulls-eye on the hull.”

The _crack_ of mug hitting tabletop got his attention. Tucker glanced up sharply only to freeze at the cold fire he saw blazing in his friend’s crystalline eyes. “I realise it’s grim, but what are you _actually_ suggesting we do?” the Englishman grated, gripping the handle so hard his knuckles cracked. “Hide under the blankets and hope all the nasty men go away? I’m perfectly willing to paint your pretty circle, but frankly I’d prefer looking for another target.”

Tucker exhaled gustily. “Point taken. Sorry.”

The dark head dropped, breaking eye contact. “So am I, Trip,” Reed said softly. “Believe me, so am I.”

They let the silence stretch: one frowning over impossible calculations the other lost somewhere in the depths of his cooling tea. “Figured everybody’d have gone to bed. Cap’n seems t’ think we’ve got a busy day tomorrow,” Trip announced at length. Malcolm cocked a well-marked brow.

“It’s late,” the American added, enunciating slowly and carefully, as if his subordinate were an especially slow puppy. Reed sniffed extravagantly.

“And I thought this was the Insomniacs Anonymous meeting!”

“Smart, Malcolm.” It took another moment for Tucker’s exhausted brain to identify the sarcasm. “You’re having trouble sleeping too?”

“I think you’ll find most of the crew are.” Albeit, Reed considered, none to the extent of the drawn, bleary-eyed figure before him. _Marley’s Ghost would look livelier! Phlox really needs to cut that non-interventionist drivel he’s been spouting._

“Not that our resident miracle-worker’s been offering her healing hands to anyone else,” he added, feeling ridiculously like the little boy in Maddie’s favourite childhood book: the one who couldn’t resist pulling the tiger’s tail. “You’re the envy of the lower decks, being offered one-on-one Vulcan stimulation….”

“I told you - it’s not what you think.” Too tired to rise to even the most tempting bait Tucker swatted his recalcitrant calculations aside and buried his head in his folded arms. “All I want’s a good night’s sleep, Malcolm, is that too much to ask? Phlox is sure T’Pol can help me. Now I’m not sure humans even _have_ neural nodes, but he won’t give me medication ‘til he’s sure her magic hands won’t work.”

“They’re not likely to when you’re avoiding her.”

The blond head snapped back. “Am not!”

Thin, well-cut lips pursed. That fine dark chocolate brow took its elegant climb toward the Brit’s hairline. Tucker groaned.

“Okay, okay. I’ve got the time, but the whole thing just gives me the heebie-jeebies, you know? It’s like going to one of those backstreet massage parlours nice folks pretend don’t exist in their town.”

A fine mist of lukewarm tea sprayed from the armoury officer’s lips. Valiantly Tucker stretched to pound the sputtering man hard on the back. “For heaven’s sake, are you trying to save the Xindi the trouble of killing me?” Malcolm gasped, flailing blindly in search of something to mop his streaming eyes. Trip dragged a crumpled tissue from his top pocket and slapped it into the outstretched palm.

“I like a massage as much as the next red-blooded guy but… hell, it just feels _cold_ with her,” he explained helplessly, insulated from the appalled fascination in his friend’s eyes by the heat of humiliation swirling out of his belly while the uncomfortable truth forced its way along his tongue. “Guess it’s what sex with a hooker feels like. You’re payin’ the lady to do a job but it don’t matter how good she is, it’s not _real_.”

“I’m sure she’s only trying to help…”

“I know, and I appreciate it but Malcolm, it’s like bein’ poked in the back by a machine! Phlox thinks I’ve got _intimacy issues_ …”

“Sounds to me like he’s right, but given his propensity for grabbing the wrong end of the proverbial he’s probably thinking physical rather than emotional.”

“Maybe.” Sour, Tucker sat back and contemplated his fingers, letting the meaning of his friend’s words sink in. “It’s all… sit down, shirt off, business, go. Bright lights, dead silence… have you been in her quarters? I’ve seen empty equipment cases with more life in ‘em!”

“I’m hardly in a position to criticise,” the tactical officer pointed out, glad to fall back on his trademark dust-dry humour. “What was it you said about my bare walls? Something to do with the Flat Earth Society finding a new home, if I remember.”

“And I just bet you do.”

Reed tipped his mug in mock salute. “It’s a bloody miracle I remember my own name these days! So that’s what this famous neuropressure’s all about, is it? A glorified Vulcan backrub?”

“Nothin’ glorified about her stickin’ her fingers down my spine. Porthos could probably do better.”

“If you don’t mind the claws.”

“Least I could talk to him without feeling I’m interrupting!”

“Trip, it’s a massage. You’re not supposed to be making small-talk!”

“ _You_ know how ansty I get when folks don’t _say_ anything!”

“I do.” Slowly, mechanically, Reed lowered his cup to the table, aware of the words crawling along his tongue and, like an onlooker at a shuttle crash, powerless to prevent disaster occurring. “You know, it’s hardly my place to challenge Phlox’s diagnosis, but it sounds to me as if what you really need isn’t an alien massage.”

“No kiddin’,” Tucker cut in bitterly.

Reed ignored him. “It’s a friend. Twenty-one hundred tomorrow, assuming we haven’t all been blown to Hell in a handcart by then? I’ll bring the beer.”

He wasn’t sure which of them was the more surprised when Tucker’s tired blue eyes lit up and a hand came off the PADDs to apply a gentle pressure to his. “Sounds good,” the Southerner said quietly. “Thanks, Mal.”

“Wait ‘til you’ve tasted the beer before thanking me.” Swiftly polishing off his tea Reed rose, pleasantly surprised to find his example being immediately followed. “Breakfast?”

Trip’s head wagged. Without confirming a time – they both knew 0800 – the two men headed side by side for B Deck and another – probably – sleepless night.


	2. Evening One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malcolm's not really in the mood to offer cheerful company but sometimes it's not jollying along we need in time of grief...

It was the last thing he wanted to do, but when Reed turned up at his door punctual to the second Trip found he couldn’t just blow the guy off. There was something so hopeful about the quiet Englishman: something in the tilt of the head, the half-smile that managed to be shy and challenging all at once. As if he knew what his less than genial host was thinking, and daring him to act on it.

 _What the hell?_ This had to be easier than getting prodded by the Vulcan – didn’t it?

“One good thing about the power fluctuations – the beer’s chilled,” Reed observed, deftly opening both bottles and thrusting one Tucker’s way. The engineer grunted.

“You been spendin’ time in Sickbay?” he asked, waving the slight brunet to the single chair beside his viewport. Malcolm winced.

“Bollocks, was that Denobulan optimism? I was only down there for five minutes.”

Despite his weariness Trip felt a judder through his chest that he recognised. _Concern_. “You hurt yourself?”

“If only,” Reed growled, suddenly enthralled by a small stain on the carpet. “Autopsy,” he added.

“Oh.” Fuller. The armoury specialist cold on a slab. “Guess you needed that for your report.”

“Apparently.” So much, the Englishman mused, for cheering up a friend. He’d be sobbing on Trip’s shoulder any minute. “Anyway I – I think I needed to _know_.”

Shrewd blue eyes assessed him for the second time in an hour, and just as he had under Phlox’s analytical gaze Reed felt himself starting to shrivel inside. “Can’t defend against something if you don’t know what it is, I suppose.”

“You written to his folks yet?”

“The first part was easy. _Dear Mr and Mrs Fuller_. Got a bit trickier after that.”

“You’ve sent it,” Tucker discerned.

“I couldn’t sleep with it hanging over me.” He hadn’t slept since finishing it either, but Malcolm figured nobody else had to know that. “It’s just so bloody _pointless_ , isn’t it? No great battle for the survival of humankind… just a stupid fucking pirate raid!”

“At least it’s only one man.” 

Eyes as cold and hard as gunmetal bored through his skull and on out through the bulkhead. “There’s no such thing as _only one_ , Trip. Every death is somebody else’s disaster, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” That hurt, but Tucker figured it was meant to. “He got brothers? Sisters?”

“One sister. Her fiancé… died a while ago.”

The pause said everything. “Florida, right?”

A sharp nod. “Ross didn’t talk about it much but – well, he had his own reasons for hating the Xindi.”

“I don't remember anyone suggesting a memorial.”

The words rang hollow but, generous to a fault, Malcolm let the cheap shot pass. “ _Close kin_ , I think the rulebook says. We painted his name on the first torpedo to be fired at a Xindi vessel. Probably against the regs, but it made Ross feel he was doing something.”

The image of their stern armoury officer carefully stencilling a stranger’s name on the gleaming body of his immaculate weapon made him grin despite himself. Tucker raised his beer in salute. “To Ross Fuller,” he said, willing his voice not to crack on the name. “And…”

“James Bracken,” Reed supplied, matching the gesture. Solemnly they clinked their bottles together before taking deep swallows. “Sorry. You’d probably have been better off with T’Pol tonight.”

“I doubt that.” There was something soothing in the lieutenant’s presence and as he sipped his beer Trip realised he was savouring liquor’s taste for the first time since word had come through. “Her beer stinks,” he added. Malcolm laughed.

“Make the most of it. I’ve only got a few bottles left.”

The words were casual but somewhere behind them Trip heard all the tension his friend was fighting off, and for his sake. “You couldn’t have done anything, Malcolm,” he said, surprised by his own earnestness. “We couldn’t be prepared for the Osarians…”

“We don’t seem to be _prepared_ for anything.”

He wanted to disagree. Tucker only wished he could think of a cogent argument. “We’re still here,” he managed at length. “Some of us.”

“I’m grateful we haven’t lost more, but it’s looking more like luck than judgement.” Reed blinked rapidly, trying to clear the glassiness from his too-bright eyes. “Oh fuck! Maybe I should bugger off…”

“Think of it as saving energy, Lieutenant.” Nobody else would make him use ranks off-duty but Trip figured the formality might comfort Malcolm. “You did turn the lights out in your quarters?”

“I find it easier to potter ‘round in the dark, actually.” The words were accompanied by a wry grin that said he’d judged the man right and Tucker felt an odd little swell of pride. “Saves me seeing how knackered I look!”

“I might try it.” He had, Trip acknowledged, kind of liked seeing himself so rough. In a twisted way it reminded him he was alive, still _feeling_ , even if it was just dogshit lousy. He yawned hugely. “Damn, I’m beat!”

Malcolm stood sharply, dropping his empty bottle into the dispenser with a clatter. “I’ll disappear. You might get some sleep.”

Panic clawed, icy fingers clenching in Tucker's guts. “Aren’t y’ even gonna give me a backrub first?” he blurted, fire flooding his face at the shock that froze the Englishman’s. “Since you’re here and all….”

“Why not?” Aware of the edge of hysteria in two voices Reed shrugged, turning abruptly on his heel. “Might as well do _something_ constructive with my day! Get your shirt off, Mister Tucker. I don’t suppose you’ve got anything…”

He wasn’t sure he wanted this – the words had been out before his lethargic brain could compute their meaning – but what the heck? He’d been subjected to T’Pol’s icy pummelling and survived, so maybe Malcolm’s hands – which he was warming ever so competently, like he’d done this all before - could do better.

Ten minutes later the first soft snore bled from Trip Tucker’s puckered lips into his pillow. Carefully dousing his palms in a third coat of vanilla scented oil (and using all his military efficiency to keep his mind off what else the aggravating Yank might do with the substance in private) Malcolm Reed continued to stretch and smooth the pliant flesh until a second and a third, deeper and louder, echoed through the compact room. 

“Sweet dreams, my friend,” he whispered, easing himself off the mattress and carelessly wiping the residue of his activities against his thighs. When the only answer was another stentorian snort he chucked softly and slipped away.


	3. Evening Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Trip's turn to do some reaching out. Maybe Malcolm's better at this supportive friend thing than he thinks...

“Lieutenant! Wait up!”

“Commander.”

At least it was an empty hallway Reed considered, squaring his shoulders as he swung to face the approaching blond. He’d been careful to avoid his regular mealtimes – not difficult with the ship still in disorder from the Osarian incident – and passed a whole day without finding any reason to contact the man’s department. 

It wasn’t, he assured himself, unconsciously falling into his standard _At Ease_ posture as he watched the chief engineer jog closer, that he was actually avoiding Trip’s likely effusive gratitude. He was simply trying to ensure that when they did meet, it was…

_Private. Like the middle of a sodding corridor. And you’re the senior bloody tactical officer!_

“You coming for a drink tonight, Malcolm?” A faint rosy hue bloomed over Tucker’s cheeks but he held the other man’s gaze boldly. “I can’t drink your booze and not give a little back, can I?”

“I suppose not.” Those pinked cheeks puffed out and with a small shock Reed identified the real cause of his friend blush. Not embarrassment. Anxiety.

Trip was reaching out just as he had, and Malcolm knew well enough how frightening that could be. “Twenty-one hundred?” he suggested, pleased by the casual tone. Tucker’s shoulders drooped. “Major Hayes and I have a joint weapons training session scheduled,” he finished, oblivious to the grim set that possessed his lips. Trip nodded.

“Give ‘em hell, Lieutenant,” he quipped, twisting back toward the turbolift. “And – thanks.”

He waited until the capsule was safely closed. “My pleasure, Trip. My pleasure!”

*

“When we get back to Earth I’m going to introduce you to my Grandpa’s firewater.” The liquor was a little warm – his own fault, Tucker conceded, he’d poured in readiness and for once in his life Reed had been all of three minutes late - but even if it had been icy the _snotty-nosed_ Limey mule would still have found fault with his favourite bourbon. “Just make sure you’re wearin’ good socks, because that stuff’ll blow ‘em right off.”

“Thanks for the warning.” The bourbon was silky and warming - too smooth, he’d have to watch his intake if he wanted control of his wayward tongue – but Reed wasn’t going to admit it. “And I’m sorry I was late. The gallant major…”

“He’s doing his best - he can’t help being one of those _military idiot_ types.” He’d seen nothing but professionalism in Hayes but Malcolm was jumpy, and it didn’t take a genius to figure that all the old insecurities were gnawing at his friend’s guts. Reed snorted.

“I dare say they have their imaginations surgically removed during their first year,” he growled, rolling another drop around his tongue. “But if I hear once more about his team’s hundred percent success rate in the last holo-analysis…”

“It’s their job to shoot things.”

“Shoot first, think later. If that gets us killed…”

“You can kick his butt through the afterlife.”

“It’d be just my luck! How’re the engines behaving?”

Tucker shrugged, taking another delicate sip. “Better, and before you ask – no, I don’t know what we’ve done to them. Maybe this region of space…”

“Make the most of it, I’m sure the Expanse is already preparing its next swift kick in the nuts. Sorry.”

“For telling the truth?” _Pretzels._ He had a packet somewhere: sharp and salty, they’d go well with the fiery liquor and something about slouching around with Reed seemed to stimulate Tucker’s repressed appetite. “You want some?”

“Thanks. Am I allowed to say you look a bit better today?”

“You’d only be the seventh person, so – go ahead.”

A dark brow tilted. “Thought I already had. Did you sleep through?”

“Almost.” Twice the nightmares had come, but each time he’d drifted off to the memory of strong hands tenderly playing on his skin. “Don’t worry – I won’t tell Phlox. He’d be hawkin’ your services like a pimp in a back alley if he knew about those magic hands of yours.”

Half-masticated pieces of pretzel flew. “I’d rather not have _Phlox_ and _pimping_ in the same sentence if it’s all the same to you,” Reed sputtered, gulping the contents of his glass in a single swallow. “But if you’re ever in need of an incompetent masseur again… well, Maddie always says willingness is more important than actual skill.”

“You can’t be that bad!” Tucker protested. “You put me to sleep.”

“Oh, she’d tell you I’m good at that. When I get started on the optimum particle density required to create a stable EM field, she’s out like a light!”

“Probably wouldn’t work with me,” Trip pointed out with a grin.

“Well you’re interested in that kind of thing, aren’t you? Mads was always more a dolls and toy doggie type. I only wanted that kind of thing when I needed to see what how big a pebble I’d need in my slingshot to knock their heads off.”

Tucker almost choked himself, requiring a hearty pound on the back before he could do more than sputter. “You did not!”

Malcolm hit him with a full-on smirk. “I did, you know. Frequently, until Mum confiscated it. The old man was at sea a lot,” he added, as if explanation was necessary. Tucker gurgled, sloshing another healthy measure into his friend’s tumbler. 

“Momma would’ve wiped my ass if I’d done that,” he mused. “Not that Susie wouldn’t’ve done it herself! Are you older than Maddie?”

“Eighteen months. I assume Susie was much bigger than you?”

“She’s the oldest – six years older than me.”

“Hmm, not worth taking on in a fight then.”

Tucker’s glass clanged on the desktop. “You fought with your sister? I mean _physically_ fought?”

“Only when the little bugger tried to scratch my eyes out because I wouldn’t let her have the water pistol Granddad gave me for my birthday.” When the Englishman bristled with righteous indignation his host couldn’t help giving vent to the biggest bellow of laughter heard on Enterprise all day.

“Lizzie tried t’ do that the day I took her puppy’s pink collar off and painted it with Starfleet badges,” Trip remembered: seeing her all over again, four years old and pigtailed, all flying fists and feet while Momma cussed, the bigger girls screamed, and Robbie got busy painting a wobbly copy of the badge right across his own chubby face. 

Something sharp and jagged twisted in his guts. “She was a feisty thing,” he whispered. “Never changed.”

“I daresay being the youngest in a big family, she had to be.” Discreetly Reed switched their glasses around, pushing the fuller toward his friend. Tucker jerked his head.

“Thanks.”

“Pleasure. I’ve got a meeting with the captain and T’Pol over breakfast.”

“Sooner you than me. The targeting array?”

“No doubt he’ll want to bother me about that, but actually – no. I’ve got an idea for giving the phase cannons a five-second boost but before I reconfigure anything he wants to run it by T’Pol.”

Blond brows shot up. “I didn’t know she was an expert.”

“She’s Vulcan. Goes with the territory, apparently.”

Trip snickered and Reed relaxed, launching into an elaborate anecdote involving the final year Tactical stream and the limits of Vulcan patience. By the time he’d tossed both tumblers into the sink and clouted his guest hard on the shoulder, loudly announcing to the whole of B Deck that they should do this again sometime the Southerner seemed more comfortable – more _Trip_ – than he’d been in far too many weeks.

That thought at least Reed considered, all but skipping to his own quarters, should sweeten his dreams for one night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because it's always seemed to me that the one thing Trip really needed was someone to talk to. Thanks for reading and reviewing - your words really do help keep the ideas coming!


	4. Evening Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the events of Extinction it's Malcolm who needs a friend. Trip gets a lesson in the benefits of being there.

“You sure it’s safe to eat those things, Cap’n?” Trip regarded the plate of wriggling nasties sitting in front of his friend with alarm. Jonathan Archer grimaced.

“Phlox says they’re fine. I guess you haven’t heard what happened when Crewman Cunningham brought tomato soup for lunch?”

“That probably means I don’t want to.” Profoundly grateful he’d eaten early Trip squeezed his eyes shut against the sight of the first fat green creepy-crawly lifted in the older man’s broad fingertips. “Uh, you mind if I run? Got reports to finish…”

“Sure you have.” Archer, he discovered, wasn’t looking at his meal either. “A couple of days, Phlox said. Hell, even the meatloaf’s going to be looking good by tomorrow!”

“Now I _know_ you’re sick.” Joking to hide his relief, Tucker turned on his heel. “You heard how Hoshi and Malcolm are doing? I haven’t seen either of them in the mess today.”

“T’Pol gave Hoshi the recipe for Plomeek soup. They invited me to join them…”

“That bad, huh?” Phlox said it was nourishing, but so was the mushed-up gunk his sisters fed their kids as babies and Tucker had never wanted to try that, either. “See you later, Cap’n!”

The notion struck him as he entered the turbolift. Before anyone else could climb aboard, he acted on it. 

“Tucker to Lieutenant Reed.”

Most people took a beat to answer. Not Malcolm. _What’s he got, a communicator implanted in his pinkie?_ “Reed.”

“You busy, Malcolm?”

He swore he could feel the dark-haired man’s exhale as the meaning of the informality struck. “Unless you count glaring a hole through the bulkhead as a productive use of time… no.”

“Get the beer ready, I’m on my way. Tucker out.”

It still sent a pleasant shock through his nervous system when he saw the armoury officer’s door standing open, two bottles visible side by side on the edge of that immaculate desk. “Figure it’s got to taste better than Hoshi’s first try of Plomeek soup.”

“She managed to get some flavour into it, so it can’t’ve been right.” The Englishman’s naturally pale skin seemed whiter than ever, pulled taut across the bridge of his straight nose. “Still, it beats – no, forget I mentioned it.”

“’s okay. I just left the captain’s mess.”

“Ah. Thought you looked a bit green around the gills. Get that down you!”

“Thanks.” He waited to make sure his host took a sip from his bottle first, eyebrows raising at the small wince. “Not good?”

“I’ve got to get used to human sustenance again according to the old mother hen. Beer’s not a bad way to start. And sit down, Trip. You’re making the place look untidy.”

“Thanks.” That was the Reed he wanted to hear, amused and acerbic. “Cap’n’s finding it tough.”

“He’s not the only one, but I _feel_ human now. Even managed to sleep in bed last night instead of curled up on the floor.”

“Nasty.”

“Hell on the back,” Malcolm agreed lightly. “Have I thanked you yet?”

“Twice. A day,” Trip assured him, not bothering to hide his exasperation. “Heck what did you expect us to do, just leave you down there?”

“Or let those charming visitors deal with _the contagion_?”

The engineer’s shudder was entirely genuine. “Don’t even talk about it! Seems like every species around here thinks it’s part of the deal t’ just… eliminate folks.”

“We should introduce ‘em to the Xindi, see if we can’t save ourselves some trouble.” Glumly staring into the base of his drink, Malcolm emitted an uncharacteristically inelegant snort. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Instinct brought up his hand and by the time Tucker remembered the Reed anti-contact protocols it was too late to turn back. He settled for giving a sturdy bicep a friendly press. “I figured you could use a friend. You’ve been avoiding people, Lieutenant!”

“It’s a bit awkward when they’re not quite sure whether you’re going to smile and say hello or growl and try to rip their heads off, Commander.”

“No different from usual then.”

“Hey!” Those lightning reflexes kicked in. Reed was halfway to vertical before comprehension slammed home. “Bastard,” he said cordially, letting himself sink back onto the bunk at Tucker’s side. “But thanks.” Trip grinned at him.

“Anytime,” he said comfortably. “You wanna talk about it?”

“It’s not _clear_ enough for me to talk about.” A small shiver of satisfaction went through the Southerner and he wiggled his buttocks into the mattress, settling himself in. Malcolm didn’t open up easily. Being the recipient of his confidence always set off pleasant warm sensations all the way through the engineer’s belly.

“It’s as if it was a dream, you know?” the Englishman mused, a small, familiar furrow cutting deep between his eyebrows as he considered his next words. “All bits and pieces jumbling up and not making sense: as if I can see things happening to someone who looks a bit like me, but it doesn’t connect, somehow.”

“Phlox’d probably tell you it’s a stress thing,” Tucker observed quietly. Cool grey eyes narrowed and he felt his face heat up under their piercing stare.

“Said the same to you, did he?” Malcolm asked quietly. Trip jerked his head.

“He’s got a second career as a shrink waiting for him, assumin’ he lives long enough,” he muttered, dashing the dampness that spiked his lashes away. “And if we don’t drive him crazy enough to need one himself!”

“Oh, Phlox is having a whale of a time – between casualties of course. With all stress this place causes it’s an anthropologist’s wet dream.”

“Eww Malcolm, that’s disgusting!” Like a small boy Tucker screwed up his face and mimed puking at the slighter man. Startled into laughter, Reed copied him.

“I’m generally a bit disgusting lately, aren’t I?” he mused. Hands with the strength of iron clamps seized his shoulders.

“You’re the best friend I’ve got, Malcolm Reed – even when you’re playin’ ape-man or whatever,” Tucker informed him severely. His expression softened, mischief bringing a glimmer to his Caribbean eyes. “Now if you’d turned into a giant bug or something it’d be different…”

“Thanks, Trip.” No need to specify what for, he knew. Warmth was unfurling from those large, competent hands in soothing ribbons that ran right to Malcolm’s heart. For the first time since he’d set foot on that benighted planet he felt whole. 

“I’ve got some shortbread in the cupboard,” he said, surprised by the feel of the words against his tongue. “I’ve been saving it for a suitable occasion but I’m starving all of a sudden. Shall I…”

“Sounds good.” His fingers refused to hear the comm. blaring from Tucker’s brain, retaining their hold on firm British muscle. “I’m always around, Mal. You need to talk, you holler, okay?”

“I know.” It was the most _Trip Tucker_ sentence he’d heard since the Xindi attack and it all but broke Reed’s susceptible heart. “I wouldn’t be a burden…”

“Friends never are.” Blue eyes bored through steel as they rose together, the taller man’s head dipped close enough for his breath, warm and vital, to brush the smaller’s upturned face. “A real good buddy of mine’s been showing me that for longer than I let myself realise! Being around you’s making me _me_ again, Malcolm. Hell, Phlox asked me yesterday what magic trick I’d found to bring me back to y’ all. You know what? It’s not magic.”

“It’s called being human, Commander.” The title slipped out unbidden and both men winced from its cold clang. “Sorry. I’m not very good at these things.”

“Oh, you are, Lew-tennant.” It was awkward, but necessary. Tucker lunged in and dragged his startled host into a brief, hard hug that left them both blushing. “I - I’d still be spitting venom at my staff and snarlin’ at folks across the mess hall if I didn’t have you around, just you remember that! So – where’s this shortbread?”

“Here.” Reed kept his back to the blond, busying himself with unnecessary drawer-tidying until he had his shaky hands under control. “You’re welcome to the chocolate chip bits, by the way. I’d better stick to plain for the time being.”

“I’ll leave you a piece,” Tucker promised. “Hey, I’m a generous man!”

“So you are.” Emotion closed his throat but the scratchy words came through loud and clear. “Now - what’s this I hear about a squabble on your watch this morning? I don’t see Crewman Anderson as the type to be impressed by a couple of rutting stags…”

“I didn’t even notice they were interested in her,” Tucker grumbled, piling up a paper plate with crumbling slabs of cookie before collapsing back onto his friend’s bed at full stretch. With a pup of the lips Reed folded himself neatly into the desk chair. “And yes, I know – Hess says they’ve been pawin’ the ground ever since she came on board.”

“She practically tripped over their tongues in the docking hatch.” Tension seeped out through his pores and Malcolm allowed himself to breathe deeper, joining his companion’s raucous laughter. “Blimey I know she’s well-endowed, but those weren’t the biggest tits on display, I can tell you!”

“Hey, we’ve all done it.” Tucker shook his head, eyes half-closing in reminiscent pleasure. “The first time I saw Ruby… hell my tongue got so damn tied I went to order a beer and came away with one ‘f those weird cocktail things, ‘cause all I could think of was…”

“Let me guess – Harvey Wallbanger? Screaming Orgasm?”

“Malcolm!” How he’d ever been fooled by that prim and proper officer’s mask Trip would never know. Silvery eyes bright as the stars streaking by at warp 3 glittered above a positively filthy smile. “Dammit, I’ve spat crumbs all over your carpet!”

“My fault entirely. Another beer?”

Tucker cocked his head. “Why not?” he said expansively, watching the pile on Reed’s plate steadily diminish as the Englishman munched thoughtlessly through his first solid food in three days. “And you’ve got to admit, Ruby’s face…”

“Among other things,” Malcolm agreed, equally wistful. He flipped the tops off two more bottles and offered the first to his friend before raising the second in salute. “To Ruby,” he said solemnly.

“To Ruby. Whoever the hell she’s sleepin’ with now!”

He stumbled out into the hall an hour later, encouraged by the hearty thump of Reed’s flat palm between the shoulder blades. “Breakfast?” the armoury officer sang out after him.

“I’ll grab us a table.”

“And half a platter of bacon if you’re there before me. I could, as my dear old Granddad used to say, eat a scabby cat! ‘Night, Trip.”

The door hissed between them before he could reply but Tucker didn’t care. “Goodnight, Malcolm.”

*

He slept better that night than he had in weeks, then got to laugh at the other man’s disgusted face when Reed entered the mess to discover him sitting calmly at their regular table with a bacon platter, two racks of toast and a stack of pancakes steaming before him. “Sit down and eat, Lieutenant,” he said sternly, lips twitching under the younger man’s petulant huff. “Somebody’s gotta get you going again, and it looks like it’s gonna be me.”

The little dip of long sable lashes as Reed disclaimed any need for a minder set the Southerner’s heart stuttering like the ancient engine of his first troublesome motorcycle – the one Mom had the other kids try to sabotage in the hope of keeping him off it Trip remembered, the familiar roll in his gullet a reminder of which little fingers had been the neatest. 

He _wanted_ to do this. To care for Malcolm Reed. This, even when he felt guilty as hell for allowing it, made him happy. “You going near the gym anytime this week?” he asked impulsively, reminded of one more unobtrusive way he could watch over the man. “Mind if I join you?”

“Of course not.” Startled but unsuspecting, Reed flashed a full-on toothy smile. “Say… 1900 tomorrow?”

The thought of having his ass whipped in hand-to-hand had never, Tucker decided, felt so good.


	5. Evening Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trip isn't the only one getting as much as he gives from these evening get-togethers...

“You just don’t _concentrate_ , Trip,” Reed complained three nights later when they finally had their intended session, efficiently stowing the mats while the Southerner dimmed the gym lights. “You’ve got the strength and the technique to drop any assailant on their arse, but I’ve seen hyperactive toddlers with a longer attention span!”

“I’m not a fighter, Mal.” Amused by the lecture Tucker flipped a handy towel at the impatient Englishman, unsurprised to have it tossed back with deadly accuracy into his face. “Shower, change and hot chocolate in my quarters?”

“Sounds good.” A swift half-turn hid the grin Reed felt breaking out at the very carelessness of the invitation. He’d almost forgotten how good it made him feel, to be sought out by his best friend.

People were commenting in corridors on the renewed focus – ironic, given the man couldn’t keep his mind on what he was doing for three minutes in this particular setting – about Commander Tucker. His hallos echoed around Engineering as frequently as his highly-developed range of expletives; and it was all of ten days since a burst of rage had last left a crewman quivering in a corner. Yes, the man wasn’t sleeping more than one night in three – last night, Reed gathered, had been a bad one – but he was connecting with people again. Letting them in.

Letting Malcolm in.

The thought kept him toasty despite the tepidity of the shower’s water so late in the evening. Scrambling back into uniform the lieutenant stuffed his workout kit back into a bag, tossed it over his shoulder and sauntered out to await his friend in the locker room.

“Go on ahead, Mal!” A misty form swayed in the next cubicle and Reed closed his eyes, focussing on the rhythm of his breathing until his unruly hormones were willing to behave. “The code…”

“I have an override, remember? Captain, Chief Engineer, C.M.O and Senior Tactical Officer privilege.”

“Take mine. Alpha One Seven Lima Bravo Two Delta. Cocoa’s in the desk drawer.”

“What did you last slave die of?” Reed hollered. Tucker cackled.

“Never had one before, Slave – so scoot!”

On the grounds that it beat hanging around like the creepy father at the school gates Malcolm obeyed, silently chanting the precious gift inside his head all the way to B Deck. Key codes were sacred. Even Trip Tucker wasn’t reckless enough to hand his out willy-nilly. 

His finger trembled on the pad. “So he trusts you,” he told his fuzzy image in the steel door sternly, wincing from the hard echo of the words in the empty corridor. “Get a fucking grip, man!”

He had their drinks made and a platter of cookies on the desk by the time his putative host arrived, dark gold hair still damp and adorably spiked. “You’re one helluva slave, Lieutenant,” Tucker drawled, hurling himself down onto his bunk and leaving the small chair by the viewport for his guest. “I think I’ll keep you.”

“I’m honoured, oh master.” Extravagantly bowing his way to his appointed seat Reed flicked the bigger man the finger, almost knocked backward by a gust of Floridian mirth. “You’ll be wanting a foot rub next.”

“Mah feet are the cleanest on the ship, but you can finish your drink first.”

“Too kind.” Over the rims of their mugs the two men smiled. “Bad night, was it?”

“Nightmares,” Trip admitted, looking shocked by his own frankness. “Hell, Malcolm, I can go two nights sleeping so deep I’d not hear a fuckin’ reactor breach and then… it’s like she’s in my quarters and I can hear her screaming…”

All the hateful platitudes crowded, clawing at Reed’s throat. _Early days… nothing you could have done… got to let yourself grieve…_ He bit hard enough to taste blood on his bottom lip, determined to keep them back. Tuckers didn’t respond well to clumsy sympathy. He’d learned that the hard way.

“My experience of little sisters is that’s what they’re good at,” he ventured instead, pleased by the way Trip frankly goggled at him. “Madeleine was a noisy bugger! Voice like a Clyde foghorn my grandmother used to say."

“Lizzie made more noise than the rest of us together.” Trip snorted, the sound half a laugh, half a sob that twisted his friend’s guts. “Guess being the youngest of five…”

“Mad didn’t have much competition – except when Dad was home.” Malcolm shuddered theatrically, remembering the clash of strident voices as Captain Reed struggled out out-bawl a dainty doll-clutching toddler. “Came in handy at the seaside though – you’d hear them bellowing half a mile away and know you hadn’t been left behind.”

He chuckled, the faint crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening. “God, I used to dread those holidays!"

“Why?” Absently reaching for another cookie Trip cocked his head at the younger man. Malcolm grimaced.

“Being frogmarched into the sea up to my kneecaps three times a day, whatever the weather. Dad’s annual Battle of Trafalgar lectures taking up half an overcrowded Cornish beach. Maddie getting so excited about getting an ice cream that she promptly sicked it up over Mum’s best summer frock every year. Having to consult the timetable to discover if we were going to the fairground or the fishermen’s museum in the afternoon. Silly things, really."

“You had a timetable on vacation?”

“And woe betide us if it wasn’t adhered to.” He’d ducked out of those summer weeks around St Ives as soon as he was old enough, and Reed suspected his father had been no less relived than he. “Thirty minutes for breakfast; beach until lunchtime; walk to the same café for lunch and then… afternoon activities. If wet, the programme would be reversed. Very big on order, my old man.”

"My folks were more free-wheelin’.”

“With five kids they probably had to be.”

“We went camping most years.” Reminiscent pleasure lit tired blue eyes and to Reed’s relief the deep furrows cutting that broad golden brow softened away. “Mom and Dad had one tent, me and Robbie, then the three girls. We’d sneak a frog into their tent, then Becky’d have them collectin’ up the creepy-crawlies to hide in my sleepin’ bag.”

“Sounds a bit like the scouts,” Malcolm observed. Trip snickered.

“Just with less discipline,” he said. “We’d run wild in the woods all day, then help Dad with the barbecue at sundown… we didn’t have a whole lot of money, but man! We had fun."

“Fun.” The word was wistful, the concept, Tucker gathered, as alien to his friend as the inhabitants of the Expanse. “No museums?”

“Mom used to let us run ‘round the outdoor sculpture gallery if that counts.” The dark-haired Brit was staring at him as if he’d started speaking fluent Klingon. Trip thrust a hand back through his hair, unwittingly mussing it even more charmingly. “Lemme guess. You had to walk.”

Malcolm gave a sharp nod. “And dust the sand off our feet before we got back to our rooms,” he remembered mournfully. “God knows how she did it, but Mad always seemed to hold enough between her toes to get all over the sheets!”

“Heck, Lizzie used to wind up with half a kilo of mud in her sleeping bag.” He could picture her now, pigtails dripping and dirt smearing her bare legs as she wriggled and shrieked, demanding he go faster as he spun her around. “It hurts, Mal!”

“Of course it does – there’s a very old saying about grief being the price we pay for love.” He was aware of a stirring in the air then a hand came down, surprisingly gentle on his shoulder. Warm breath fanned his cheek, heating the single tear that clung at the corner of Tucker’s eye. “I know it sounds trite – feel free to snap my head off – but someday it _will_ help to remember the good times.”

The engineer bent double in a heave, pulling in his lips as he fought off the tidal surge of unwelcome emotion rushing him. “Y’ think?”

“I know.” Utterly serious, Reed shuffled around to stand directly before the Southerner, forcing a reluctant Tucker to meet his intent gaze. “What would be better, Trip? Remembering Elizabeth as she was, or never having known her at all? She deserves to be remembered – they all do.”

“Seven million, Malcolm.” He felt the tension creep into the body so close to his own; heard the hated note of cold steel that had disappeared in recent weeks come back, and it froze Reed to the core. “She wasn’t any more _deserving_ than any of them.”

“Not to the other families who are mourning, no. But to you…”

He sucked in a breath and rocked back on his heels, giving the words time and space to permeate the whole room. “It’s probably apocryphal, but Stalin is supposed to have said: One death is a tragedy. A million is a statistic.

“We can’t cope with the big numbers, Trip. The human mind can’t grasp that scale. That’s why Lizzie’s important, because she was _real_. Not a number or a name but a person, whose family won’t ever feel the same now she’s gone. Trust me, whenever we go into action against the Xindi every member of this crew’s going to be thinking: _that one’s for Lizzie, you bastards!_ She matters to us because you matter, and don’t you ever forget it!”

“I…” Stunned, Tucker stared up at the bristling Englishman with his jaw on the carpet. “Thanks, I guess,” he managed, hyper-conscious of the warm colour slowly draining into the hollows beneath Reed’s prominent cheekbones. “Hey – are you eating enough? You’re lookin’ a little _gaunt_...”

"And you look exhausted.” Faintly embarrassed, Malcolm backed off to his abandoned chair and swigged the dregs of his cooling chocolate. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get carried away.”

“’s okay.” He felt warm all over. As if he’d just stepped out of Decon, Trip decided, cleansed, comfortable and just downright, bone-deep good. “You’re a good friend, Malcolm. I ‘ppreciate that.”

“I’ll sod off if you want.” The slighter man was fidgeting like a turtle with its ass in the fire, visibly torn between wanting to help and running away. Tucker raised an almost-steady hand.

“You stay right where you are, Lieutenant,” he said sternly. “You’ve not eaten today, have you?”

Shoulders slumping, Enterprise’s perfect officer turned into a mutinous child. “Had breakfast,” he muttered. In spite of himself, Trip chuckled.

“Wait here – I’ll go grab us what’s left in the observation lounge.” 

“Trip, I…”

Piercing blue eyes the shade of a Florida sky sparkled at him. “You matter too, Malcolm,” Trip reminded him, softening what could have been a rebuke with a squeeze of the arm. “Fix us up some more hot chocolate willya?”

“Aye, sir.” The formality, Reed considered, held them both together and with a cocky grin the American sprinted off down the hall. Maybe he wasn’t totally disastrous at this _being supportive_ malarkey after all.

“Or maybe,” he told himself, using the thirty seconds it took the kettle to boil to splash cold water onto his face in Tucker’s compact bathroom, “he’s just too bloody _nice_ to be true!”


	6. Evening Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grief is an incredibly powerful force. It doesn't always strike people the way you might expect...

“A _bio-weapon_?” Tucker leaned heavily on the situation room table, aware of the slow drip-drip of every individual drop of blood seeping down into his soles. “Cap’n that’s…”

“We’re onto them, Trip.” This was a Jonathan Archer he didn’t recognise, cold and implacable. Hate, Tucker figured, hit everybody the same way. The opaque eyes, the hard, thin set line of the lips… looking into his oldest friend’s face was like seeing himself a few weeks ago.

Before Malcolm took his ever-so-discreet British pickaxe to the stone walls he’d been building.

Malcolm. Absent from a briefing. That couldn’t be right. “Cap’n, where’s Malcolm?”

Archer blinked. Ice crystals formed around Trip’s organs at the slow crawl of a terrible realisation. “I hadn’t thought… he’ll be in the armoury I guess. Any questions?”

_Yes – how in hell did you run a whole briefing without missing your senior tactical officer? Dammit Jon, he’s the first person you need right now!_

A detour to the armoury – hushed as any funeral home despite the full complement on duty - confirmed his worst fears. “Lieutenant Reed’s working on the Xindi weapon, Commander. In his office,” Crewman Morozova stated blandly, keeping her almond-shaped blue eyes fixed somewhere way over Tucker’s shoulder. 

It didn’t help. He still saw the redness around them.

With a brisk nod he stepped out and let the doors slide shut behind him before snagging the communicator from his sleeve pocket. “Tucker t’ Lieutenant Reed.”

Silence. 

Thick and heavy as the gloom in Malcolm’s domain it closed around him. “Okay, I get it,” he said, fighting to keep the unwarranted impatience from his voice, because if anyone knew about hogging a loss alone, it should be him. “You need some time, you’ve got it. But I’ll be outside your door at nineteen-thirty hours Lieutenant, and you’d better be ready to open it! Tucker out.”

*

His guts lurched to find Reed’s door wide open a full minute before the appointed time. “Come in, Commander,” the familiar clipped accent instructed as his shadow fell across the entrance.

The very preparedness made his heart sink: that and the sight of the tactical officer in full uniform, standing behind his desk in his trademark _At Ease_ stance, the relaxation of the posture at odds with the tension that froze his pinched features. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“Start by cutting the crap and getting me a coffee?” Tucker suggested lightly. Reed lifted a well-marked brow.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Okay, I’ll do it.” Cockiness. It might be the last thing he felt but Trip knew it would get a reaction, release the real, feeling man behind professionalism’s frozen mask. Reed bristled.

“Make yourself at home, why don’t you?” he growled. Trip threw a grin over his shoulder.

“Don’t mind if I do,” he said cheerfully. “Even if you’re gonna snip at me all night.”

Anyone else would have cordially invited him to leave. Not Malcolm Reed. That would be the obvious strategy. 

Instead the Brit collapsed onto his bunk, feigning disinterest well enough to fool anyone else up to and including the captain himself. “There’s probably enough milk for both of us,” he volunteered, brittle. Trip nodded.

“’s okay. You have any luck with that damn weapon?”

“Not much.” Hands gripped in his lap, Reed looked anywhere but at the man determined to act as if nothing had happened. “”I’m a bit wary of just… pulling it apart.”

“Damn right.” Everything the Xindi threw at them seemed to have a nasty surprise hidden behind the initial unpleasantness, and the thought of what they might be cooking up out of Rajin’s biodata turned even the iron stomach of a Tucker male. “You know what they’re planning now?”

“It’s been rather hard to avoid. The captain might as well have stood on the saucer section with a megaphone.”

“If gossip powered starships I’d be the happiest man in Starfleet,” Trip agreed ruefully. Malcolm raised a watery grin.

“Or out of a job.”

“The engines’d be way less antsy than they are on anti-matter around here.” That sounded almost natural. Some of the knots in the engineer’s belly began to loosen. “You eaten?”

Reed nodded. “Doctor’s orders,” he said tersely. Tucker frowned.

“You okay?” he began, half an octave higher with sudden alarm. A thin, fine-boned hand waved a dismissal.

“Mortuary reports.”

“Shit I’m sorry, Malcolm.” This, Trip figured, was how Malcolm – hell, the whole crew – must have felt around him when the news from home came through. _Open mouth, insert boot. Sideways._

“At least it was quick.” The words were too glib, a cracking veneer that couldn’t conceal the rottenness beneath. The Englishman exhaled a long, shaky breath. “Phlox assured us they won’t have felt a thing.”

“Us?” Tucker queried.

“The MACOs lost men too, Commander.”

Usually Trip would have called out the unnecessary formality. Not now. Not with Malcolm clinging to rank like a shipwrecked sailor hanging onto the last floating plank of the sinking hull. “Guess the cap’n’s gonna be busy with those memorials,” he said, applying a mental boot to his own ass when the dark-haired man flinched. “Unless Hayes…”

“The MACOs will attend to their own, apparently.” Malcolm Reed recovered his poise faster than anyone else, up to and including the Vulcan goddess. Usually Tucker admired that, but combined with the knotted fingers and the frozen posture it was downright unnerving him now. “He offered to loan me his template.”

Trip took a gulp of his coffee, buying himself a moment to wonder exactly which weird parallel universe he’d slipped into this time before asking the obvious question. “What template?”

“Condolence letter.” Pure loathing, the first sincere emotion he had sensed all night, poisoned the pleasant timbre of the British voice. Tucker winced.

“He’s got a standard form for _that_?”

“Good practice, apparently. He was a bit taken aback when I suggested I might prefer to address each bereaved family as individuals.”

“I’ll bet.” He’d been on the receiving end of those coldly precise rebukes often enough to doubt even the gallant major’s hide was sufficient to absorb the barb. “Have you…”

Reed jerked his head, pressing his lips together so hard they hurt. “Can’t,” he croaked. “It’s just…”

The pursed lips quivered. A single huge breath surged, softening every sinew of Reed’s tight, compact form. “I can’t,” he blurted, hiding his face in both hands like a little boy as the sobs broke free. “Oh God Trip, I can’t!”

His body knew how it should react – by reaching across, dragging the distraught man into his arms and squeezing so hard he could hug the grief and the pain right out of him – but Tucker’s brain froze up. If T’Pol had dissolved into a hysterical heap at his feet he couldn’t have been more dumbfounded. 

Malcolm Reed was a rock. His rock. _Don’t do this to me now Mal, I can’t handle seeing you hurting!_

Once the tears started to fall Reed forgot to be embarrassed by them. Doubling over he let them come with the abandon of a child, muscles going slack as the gasping shudders possessed him. His existence forgotten Tucker could only stand and stare, marvelling at a bold acceptance of grief he couldn’t share.

Only when the other man’s sobs began to subside into raspy whimpers did he rediscover the power of movement, toppling forward to pat awkwardly at the slighter man. “I’m sorry Malcolm, I’m so, so sorry,” he murmured, rolling his fingertips deep into the compacted muscles between Reed’s neck and shoulder. “There was nothing you could do, you’ve got to remember that. Aw, c’mere!”

Limp as a sack of Chef’s potatoes the lieutenant let himself be manipulated into Tucker’s lap, his face nestling automatically in the hollow of the Southerner’s throat. Like a potent drug the raw essence of the man flooded his bloodstream; soft, regular breaths stirred his hair. It made Malcolm feel, traitorously, better. Comforted. 

Safe.

Long fingers carded through his hair. “You just cry it all out, Malcolm,” Tucker’s honey drawl crooned, more a lullaby than an instruction. “You’ve gotta let it go, that’s right. I’m here, you just let it go.”

“Rather,” _hic_ “thought I,” _sniff_ “just had.”

“Feeling better f’r it?” The sarcastic hiccough was its own answer but Tucker hugged his friend harder all the same, tiny fissures running across his heart at every little shudder going through the slim form. Reed’s dark head shifted through a minimal nod.

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.” Okay, maybe he’d regret that expansive promise someday but with Reed meeting his concerned stare straight on Trip could ignore conscience’s feeble pang. “’s what friends are for.”

Another faint shiver ran through the Englishman, one he vaguely identified as ironic amusement. “Don’t ever forget that, friend,” he said.

The cracks across his heart widened into chasms and spasmodically Tucker hugged the man laying trustingly in his lap tight enough to bust a rib. “I won’t,” he agreed hoarsely, surprised by the fervency behind the words. “You be okay now?”

“Fine.” For once Tucker didn’t question the automatic response. Red-nosed, swollen around the eyes and still quivering from the seismic shock of his outburst Malcolm looked calmer, more focussed, than he had since…

_Since Fuller was killed._

Stunned by the realisation he didn’t try and stop the tactical officer struggling to his feet. Scrubbing his dripping nose like a truculent schoolboy Reed tossed their unwanted mugs into the dispenser and smiled at the Southerner.

“You willing to give me a hand with that bastard rifle sometime?” he asked a propos of nothing. Trip’s head started to wag of its own volition.

“Gimme a call,” he invited, bones creaking on the heave to vertical. One large hand stretched out, wrapping itself warmly around the lieutenant’s wrist. “Anytime.”

Time slowed. Tucker would’ve sworn he could hear the matched thump of both their hearts beating. “Right back atcha, buddy,” Malcolm drawled in his wickedly exaggerated Southern accent. The grip on his arm tightened for a moment before Tucker turned and fled.


	7. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They say actions speak louder than words, but when the two combine they can shout loud enough even for a Tucker to hear...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A (very) short intermission. I've tried this as an ending to the previous chapter and as a first portion of the next, and it didn't seem to fit right in either, so I concluded.... just put it in on its own!

He suspected neither of them slept well, but when they met in the situation room Malcolm flashed a genuine grin and bone-deep tiredness stopped mattering. When he produced a small PADD and handed it to Archer with a diffident request that its contents be attached to the captain’s report, Tucker could have whooped for joy.

He caught the downturn of the MACO commander’s lips and on instinct his hands curled up, pushing behind his back against the urge to wipe the disdainful look off the man’s face. “They’ll go through faster with your authorisation, sir,” Reed murmured.

Archer gripped his arm. “No problem, Malcolm,” he said in the overly solemn tone Trip remembered his Aunt Jo adopting at some distant relation’s funeral. “If you want to spend some time in the armoury…”

“Ensign Wells will cover the bridge.” Gratitude brought an appealing flush to the too-pale cheeks, lapping like a gentle flame over chiselled peaks. Archer nodded.

“Call if you need anything. Dismissed.” 

For the rest of the day the Chief Engineer was preoccupied with one trivial system failure after another. Lunch was a write-off; dinner a dried-out sandwich consumed on the run between maintenance shafts. By the time he stumbled into the observation lounge after twenty-two hundred he’d forgotten it had been all day since he laid eyes on his best friend.

Malcolm sat on a viewport couch, but he wasn’t alone: in the senior officers’ sanctuary he had a crewman by the arm, penetrating grey eyes fixed on the young man’s face as he spoke, low and earnest. Tucker arched an eyebrow, waved and headed on by to the dispenser unit, calling for hot chocolate and spinning back on his heel, indicating his intention with a waggle of the eyebrows.

Over his subordinate’s shoulder Reed mouthed his silent thanks. Trip figured by the time the door was shut behind him the intrusion had already been forgotten.

So he didn’t expect the oddly tentative call over the comm. twenty minutes later. “Reed to Commander Tucker. D’ you have a moment, sir?”

“No, but Trip’s free if you want him.”

He tried not to notice how calming the Brit’s rueful chuckle was against his ear. “Sorry. Just wanted to apologise for allowing the lower orders into sacred space.”

“Malcolm.” Only a Reed would think a Tucker might give a rat’s ass about that! “The guy looked pretty broken up. Even T’Pol would’ve understood…”

“He went through the Academy with Porter you see.” Absolution freely granted was never enough for Malcolm: there had to be a thorough explanation for every minor protocol breach. “I didn’t expect anyone to be around… you’re all right, aren’t you?”

“I’m fine.” The concerned question sounded so young – innocent almost – on the tail of its earnest preamble, and Trip shivered to the core at the realisation it brought. 

Malcolm wasn’t really explaining an imagined offence. Whether he admitted it to himself or not, he’d grabbed an excuse to check on his best friend. “Honestly, Malcolm. It’s been a rough day, but I’m good. See you for breakfast?”

“I’ll save you some toast if you’re really unlucky. Reed out.”


	8. Evening Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trip opens up. Malcolm reciprocates. That really should give someone a clue...

When the going got tough over the next few days Tucker reminded himself of that late, diffident call. Malcolm cared. He wasn’t alone.

Even when Lizzie came to him in the middle of the night, her screams echoing around his quarters long after full consciousness returned he could hug that knowledge close, use it to calm himself back to sleep. It scared him, a little.

He couldn’t depend on anybody any more. Life was fragile and the Senior Tactical Officer’s place was out there three steps ahead of the front line. If he lost Malcolm now…

“Damn it all Trip, what are you trying to do?” A thin hand slapped his away from the mess of ultrafine cable he’d been knitting through the torpedo launch pad. Frowning, Reed nudged with his hip, easing himself in at the Southerner’s side to deftly remake the relevant connections. “You’ll have the bugger blow up in your face in a minute!”

“Sorry.” Damn, now the rest of the armoury crew were staring and his face was getting hotter than one of their boss’s fabled symmetrical blasts. “Maybe I’d better leave this t’ the experts today.”

“Nightmares again?” 

The compassionate query kissed his ear. Trip nodded. “You got some free time tonight?”

“After twenty hundred I suppose my diary’s clear. Why?”

_Good question!_

This, Tucker decided, was one of those _out-of-body experiences_ he’d heard people talk about. He was aware of everything in the room: the low hum of voices as Reed’s team worked in the background; the slight blurring around his reflection in the glistening steel bulkhead; the words, spoken in the most familiar Florida drawl, tumbling from lips he no longer controlled.

“C’n I tell you about Lizzie?”

The Englishman’s sharp features softened. “Of course,” he said, as resolutely practical as if he’d been asked to hand over his friend’s best hyperspanner. “I’ll stop by after hand-to-hand training, shall I?”

Said hyperspanner seemed to have lodged itself right across his throat. Trip jerked his head. 

Jon Archer would have gripped his arm; suggested a break. Malcolm Reed started talking about power conduits and the EPS grid, and Tucker loved him for it. 

He spent the rest of the day alternately thinking about Elizabeth and cursing his inability to get her sweet face out of his head. By the time twenty-hundred rolled around with the inevitable hoot from his doorchime he was all wound up and ready to cancel the whole thing.

Then he saw Malcolm peek around the door. Malcolm out of uniform, looking soft and rumpled in sweats and a fleecy sweater. Straight off having his butt kicked by a bunch of unskilled apes, his face calm but his wintry-ocean eyes wide and wary. Balanced on the balls of his feet: ready to deflect the impact if – and he knew it was possible – Tucker blew him off.

“Come in, buddy.”

The temptation to do just that couldn’t stand up against the shy defiance he read in the Brit’s taut posture. Trip patted the bunk at his side, cocking his head toward the big leather photograph album standing under a skin of dust on his bedside chest. “I won’t bite unless you ask me, Mal. Sit. You want coffee?”

“No thanks. We can talk about the torpedo launchers, if you’d prefer.”

“I’ve seen enough of them for one lifetime.” Reverent, Tucker flipped the first page of the battered album. “Mom put this together before we first shipped outta spacedock,” he said.

A dark brow lifted. “Sweet of her.”

Not, Tucker gathered, something Mrs Reed would have contemplated doing for her boy. “That’s the whole family at Lizzie’s baptism,” he said, jabbing a grimy fingernail at the first shot of a crowd of big-eyed, snub-nosed grinning blondes. “Figure there’s a Tucker _look_ , whatever Dad says.”

“Oh, definitely.” The kids all tumbling around, adults beaming… the whole image radiated love and pride. “I assume that’s Granny Johnson.”

A neat nail grazed the image of a small, stout woman with steely hair and the biggest smile to be found outside Denobula. “You mention her a lot,” Reed clarified hastily. Trip laughed.

“”She was one helluva woman. Tiny, but tough. Mom’s a lot like her.”

“Granny Reed’s the same. Nothing of her, but she ruled the naval officers in the family with a rod of iron.”

“She still goin’ strong?”

“Thankfully, yes.” As Trip turned the page, Malcolm allowed himself a small sigh. He really would have to write to Granny soon.

“You know those camping trips I told you about?” Tucker’s attention had shifted to the picture opposite, one of a gaggle of laughing children up to their chubby calves in mud. “That’s how they usually looked. You find some dirt, you’ll find a Tucker kid, Mom always said. Damn, look at Lizzie!”

The smallest child was centre stage – Malcolm suspected he might find that a recurring theme – with mud smeared down her face and something – a frog, he gathered from his neighbour’s theatrical shudder – clutched in her hands. “She couldn’t leave the wildlife alone,” Trip muttered gruffly. “When she was six years old she decided she was gonna make a mouse circus in the garage… thought she could train the critters t’ jump through hoops.”

A fine chocolate brow arched. “I imagine it didn’t end well,” Malcolm ventured, carefully neutral.

Trip snorted. “Not when she let Susie’s kitten in to watch the show.”

“Ouch.”

“Mom said she had t’ clean the mess up, but guess who wound up shiftin’ all those bits ‘f mouse?”

The question was rhetorical, he gathered. Greatly daring, Malcolm reached out to press the hand caressing the page. “I’m sure she assumed that’s what big brothers were for,” he said quietly.

Tucker’s lips trembled and he squeezed them together hard. “She used to call me her hero, you know? Some fuckin’ hero!”

“Because you couldn’t stop an alien probe with one hand?”

The golden head jerked. “Shoulda done somethin’.”

Reed closed his eyes, feeling the tickle of air filling his lungs. Slowly, he exhaled.

“You are, though. You’re going to stop any other family suffering like yours has. That sounds pretty heroic to me,” he said. Bleary blue eyes widened.

“She’d like that,” Tucker marvelled. “Lizzie. It’d give her a real kick to imagine her big brother savin’ the planet.”

“Then do it for her, Trip. We’re all here to help. You don’t have to do it alone.”

“It won’t bring her back.”

_Focus, Reed. Breathe. You can do this!_

“But she’s not really gone, has she?” he asked, keeping his voice level somehow. “As long as you can still see her in your head – remember what she was for all those years – Lizzie’s still here.”

For the first time he saw a single teardrop slide from the corner of one big summer-sky eye. “I’m never gonna hear her callin’ me her hero again.”

“You’ll never forget she did.”

Slumped shoulders circled through a shrug. “Wish Ah could, sometimes,” Tucker mumbled.

“No you don’t.” With a confidence that surprised both men Reed gripped the Southerner’s chin, forcing the tear-bright eyes to meet his own. “Because you’ll always love her, and knowing that will keep a part of her alive. You owe her that, don’t you?”

Trip sniffed, dashing vaguely at his face. “When did you git so damn wise?” he grated, past the baseball lodged in his throat. Malcolm cocked his head.

“Can I have that in writing?” 

“Dammit, Malcolm!” Tears. He’d held them off for so damn long and now they were flowing, all thanks to that quiet, brilliant little Limey bastard. Lunging forward Trip Tucker buried his face in the side of his best friend’s neck and sobbed, silent tremors wracking his length while slowly, stealthily, Reed eased them both back against the bulkhead, his arms coming up to lightly cradle the distraught American. “Been tryin’ – so fucking hard – not t’ break - like this!”

“You have to.” Silky strands of purest gold slithered against Reed’s fingers as they carded deep into Tucker’s soft hair. “Nobody can hold all that pain in forever, Trip: not without it killing them and she’d hate that, wouldn’t she?”

“Yeah.” As quickly as they’d opened the tear ducts blocked up and tired, heavy-lidded eyes were raised to wander over his serious face. It took all the strength Reed possessed to hold them, but the reward made his heart sing.

Trip Tucker smiled at him.

“I miss her so much, Malcolm,” he said earnestly. “’s like things’ll never be right again…”

“They’ll be different, but you’ll go on.”

“Because it’s what she’d want - Elizabeth. Hell, she’d have kicked my butt from one end of the quadrant t’ the other if she’d seen me lately!”

“I’m sure she knew you well enough to predict exactly how her loss would affect you. I only wish there’d been someone else out here who understood you that well.”

“We’re not good at takin’ sympathy, us Tuckers.” It was, after a fashion, an apology and Reed accepted it with a crisp nod. “See this – that’s Lizzie at her high school prom. Me, Dad and Robbie each took her date aside and warned him what happens to guys who mess with Tucker daughters. I never saw him again.”

“I wonder if she did!”

Trip snickered and scrubbed his dripping nose. “She looked so grown-up that night I couldn’t believe it - my baby sister! This one’s from my graduation day – they all came up to San Francisco ‘specially for the ceremony. She kept callin’ me _Captain Tucker_ in front of all the admirals, and not one of them said a word about it.”

“I daresay she wasn’t the first proud relation to get a bit _carried away_.” His arm was still around the bigger man’s shoulders and Malcolm felt no urge to remove it. Trip, he gathered, had forgotten it existed. “Where’s your brother?”

“Behind the camera most likely.” Trip stroked his sister’s beaming image, lingering on the upturned lips. “I – thanks, Malcolm. I haven’t looked at these since it happened. Maybe I should’ve.”

“You weren’t ready before and it may be trite, but it’s true. These things need time, and it’s a different process for us all.”

The ruffled blond head cocked. “That sounds like the voice ‘f experience, Lieutenant.”

He watched enthralled as the Englishman’s careful composure wavered for the first time. “My grandfather’s death hit me… pretty hard,” Malcolm admitted, eyes cast down.

“I’m sorry.” The arm resting on his shoulders had tightened, every muscle tensed. Trip suspected his friend didn’t know he was doing it, but the old _emergency bulkheads_ were locking into place all around the tactical officer. “How old were you?”

“Twenty-one. He was the only Reed who ever seemed at all proud of me, so when he died… of course it led to another row with Dad.”

“How come?” He said it as if was so obvious, Trip reflected grimly. Pursed lips released a shaky breath.

“Gramps had rewritten his will so Mad and I didn’t have to wait to turn twenty-five for our bequests to come through. Meant I didn’t have to scrimp and save for my last year at the Academy and as far as Dad was concerned… well, he accused his parents of _betraying their only child_ when they even chose to keep in touch with me, so my getting fifteen thousand to see me through into the big wide world went down like a cup of cold sick. He held things up for six months before Gran’s solicitor got him to back down.”

“That must’ve been tough.” He wanted to say more but for once in his life Trip Tucker couldn’t find the words. Reed shrugged.

“He was my friend as well as my grandfather: my hero too, I suppose. I was doing flight training from Jupiter Station when it happened – he hadn’t been ill, just dropped dead in the garden one afternoon – and by the time I got the letter…”

“You missed the funeral?”

“One less fight for Dad to cause, and Gran was very understanding. Said the last thing he’d have wanted was to interrupt my training when he knew how much – how much my chosen career meant to me.”

“I’m glad you had him in your corner, Mal.” If there was an afterlife he’d find that particular Admiral Reed – there were a few of them in the family tree, Trip assumed – and shake him by the hand. “Does – is it easy to remember the good times now?”

“Oh, yes!” As fast as it had seized him, the tension leeched from Malcolm’s limbs and he unleashed his rarest wide smile. “Scrambling in the mountains with him at their place in Austria… those were the _good_ holidays, when Dad was attached to the embassy in Malaysia and it wasn’t worth sending Mad and I all that way for the two weeks off school. We spent Christmas with them once, too.”

Trip didn’t need to ask if that had been the happiest holiday season of his friend’s life, and it broke his poor battered heart. “You got any pictures?”

“Gran sent me one – it’s in a drawer somewhere.”

“Show it to me someday?”

Shy, Reed nodded. “If you’re interested. It – I think the hardest part about his death was having nobody to share it with – nobody to talk to until we got home and I could comm. Maddie at least. Talking about him made him seem more _real_ somehow. Or perhaps I mean more present, I don’t know.”

“Guess I’m lucky to have you down the hall, then.” Lizzie’s laughing face caught his eye – her own graduation day this time, the scroll of her honours degree dangling like a half—forgotten rag doll from one hand. “I don’t think there was a picture taken of Elizabeth where she wasn’t smiling, you know? Granny used t’ call her out little ray of Florida sunshine, and…”

Slim fingers wound around his. “Aw, shit,” Trip croaked, feeling the agony wash up through his guts all over again. “Malcolm…”

“It’s okay.” With his free hand Reed manipulated the burlier body around until Tucker was almost on his lap, face burrowed in at the hollow of his exposed throat. “It’s too soon for you to laugh yet I know, but I’m here whenever you want to talk about her, okay? If it helps – even if doesn’t and you just want to bawl on my shoulder – I’m here.”

“Just – jus’ don’t let me go, alright?” The officer in him might cringe from the plea but Trip swatted its protest away, inhaling the reassurance of his best friend’s presence as if it were pure oxygen. “I don’t – I can’t be alone right now, it hurts so much…”

He was aware of motion - of a sickening lurch around the midriff - but it wasn’t until he felt the soft give of a pillow beneath his shoulders Trip understood. 

The arms encircling him tightened; a lean, lithe body curled protectively around his. “I won’t leave you,” that familiar British voice, its clipped edges oddly softened, whispered against his hair. “If you want me to stay…”

“Please.”

He tried to get the word out but Tucker figured it got lost somewhere in the middle of his four-year-old self’s loud howl. Convulsively he hugged the dark-haired man, too far gone to register the delicate brush of lips across his crown in reply. 

Half an hour later, with the paroxysm of tears dissipated to the occasional incoherent whimper Reed risked a minimal shift of position, relieved to feel the larger body sag with the pliancy of putty to fill the tiny gap between them. “You sleep it off now, love,” he murmured, allowing the endearment to fill the room as he’d never have dared had he the smallest suspicion of it being heard. “I promise you’ll feel better in the morning. 

“I just hope you’ll still be speaking to me by lunchtime!”


	9. Deja Vu (All Over Again)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is becoming the new normal...

There was, he acknowledged, some residual awkwardness from both parties when the commander woke in a subordinate officer’s embrace at the alarm call: then the everyday business of getting ready for shift kicked in, and by the time Reed sneaked out of his quarters Trip was able to grip his arm and mutter near-coherent thanks. It was, Malcolm presumed, a positive sign.

As was the readiness with which the Chief Engineer contributed to the senior staff’s daily trellium debate, scheduled early thanks to T’Pol’s scientific curiosity. Reed had never been gladder of it. 

He ducked out of breakfast, then kicked himself all the way to the armoury having caught Trip’s disappointed face. Made a point of heading for lunch at their usual time only to find the mess completely lacking in adorable blond chief engineers; and forgot about dinner while he worked on Hoshi’s translation of the Xindi database munitions section. By the time anyone gathered the courage to tap on his office door, the chronometer was showing past twenty hundred. “Come in!”

“Room service.” Guilty giggles floated in behind the buttery Florida drawl and Malcolm was startled into matching them, halfway out of his seat to receive the tray being thrust across his desk. “Found anything?” Tucker enquired casually.

“Hoshi claims it’s English, but it makes as much sense as Klingon to me.” His mouth was watering at the grilled cheese sandwiches on offer but courtesy commanded Reed to wait. “D’ you want to…”

“No, I wanna make sure you eat something, you stubborn bastard.” Laughing, Trip gave his shoulder a light shove, sending the lithe lieutenant sprawling back into his chair. “Cap’n says there’s one helluva debris field comin’ up on long range scans but the asteroids are loaded with trellium, so…”

“No chance of a detour.” Peace offering? Vote of thanks? Or just Charles Tucker the Third being a thoroughly decent bloke? Malcolm couldn’t decide, so he seized the first sandwich and bought himself a little time chewing on it. “You, er – you’re okay?”

“Better.” His hand was captured and squeezed so hard he could feel all that hot melted cheese oozing out between charred crusts. “You’re smarter than you look, Lieutenant – and that’s sayin’ something, because you’ve always looked pretty damn smart to me.”

Compliments. Didn’t the bugger know they frightened him more than a marauding fleet of Reptilians? “Just don’t forget, you don’t have to grieve on your own,” he said, wincing away from his own intensity. “There are people who care about you here – me included.”

Tucker jerked his head. “You, uh, you get some sleep tonight, okay?” he tried, visibly scrabbling for a safe phrase. “Guess you didn’t…”

“I’ve had worse nights.” No point scaring the man with admissions of how comforting it had been to hold him, relaxed, warm and heavy, through the small hours. “But you’re probably right. I’ll eat, finish with this and hit the hay.”

“Attaboy.” Most people would have taken their cue to leave, but Malcolm knew to his cost that Charles Tucker the Third was not _most people_. “Y’ know, Chef and I were talkin’ about morale while he fixed that up. How’d you describe it?”

Malcolm sniffed. Expressively. “Rock bottom, but don’t worry: at the present rate it’ll be even worse next week,” he said. Trip’s soles squeaked against the deck plating. 

“That’s what we thought. Figure it’s time we did something t’ improve things.”

Dark brows shot up. “Movie night?” Reed enquired. To his delight, the Southerner actually started.

“How did you guess? I’m gonna suggest it to the cap’n, next chance I get.”

“It wasn’t difficult.” The weekly show had originally been the engineer’s suggestion, and Reed acknowledged it had played its part in encouraging inter-departmental relations. “Tuesdays?”

“It’s traditional. Gimme a hand with the schedule?”

“It’s bound to be easier to work out than this bloody database.” Smiling at the sight of such unabashed Floridian enthusiasm Malcolm waved his friend out into the main armoury, half a sandwich in his grip as he returned his attention to the task at hand. Sustenance and a reason to be cheerful – maybe they’d make the job of deciphering the Xindi armament data almost manageable!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short interlude before (hopefully0 I tie this one up. Thanks again for all the kind words!


	10. Evening Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matters come to a head.

“You’re sure she’ll be okay?” Still as a corpse T’Pol lay on the biobed between them, and as Tucker asked the question he could feel Jonathan Archer tensing up at his side. Never lifting his gaze from his patient, Phlox nodded.

“It may take several treatments to fully heal the synapses but you got her out in time, Captain,” he said, not bothering to lower his voice. “I’ll keep her under mild sedation for the next few hours, but she’ll be released in time for the movie tomorrow. If you notice any unusual behaviour…”

“We’ll let you know.” Gratefully Archer lunged across to grip the Denobulan’s shoulder. “I just wish…”

“The damage to the Selaya’s crew had been irreversible for months, Captain. Their swift end was – under the circumstances – the kindest thing.”

The captain brightened visibly. “That’s what I keep telling myself,” he admitted. “Well – keep me informed. Goodnight, Trip.”

“’Night, Cap’n – Doc.” It had, apparently, been someone else’s idea to overload the Selaya’s power grid, blowing first the bulkheads, then the ship herself to smithereens. 

Practical, sure. Necessary – well, that was obvious. Easy on a tender conscience? Trip suspected definitely not.

He detoured at the turbolift, hesitating a split second before striking the doorchime. “Only me, Malcolm!” he hollered.

“I thought it might be.” As he’d expected. Still in uniform, gnawing his bottom lip to unusual plumpness, the dark-haired Englishman looked paler than ever, tension deepening the fine lines at the corners of his eyes that only usually crinkled up when he smiled. “Contrary to popular report this isn’t exactly Enterprise’s social hub.”

“Works for me.” No formal invitation but the door hadn’t been shut in his face either, so Trip figured he was welcome. “I’ve just got out of Sickbay. Thought you’d wanna know, Phlox says T’Pol’s going to be fine.”

“I never doubted it.” Listless, Reed gestured to the bunk and Tucker let himself collapse with a thud. “D’ you want a drink? I’m out of beer…”

“No, I want to know you’re not beating yourself up over what you had to do to get your team off that ship.”

The direct approach. Malcolm hadn’t expected that, and it pulled out the unguarded response a more convoluted strategy wouldn’t have reached. “I keep telling myself it’s for the best – for all parties,” he confessed, slumping at the Southerner’s side. Tucker’s arm came up to curl protectively around him and he didn’t shuck it off.

“From the way T’Pol was acting when you dragged her off the pod – no kiddin’,” the engineer said gruffly, small shocks running through him at the trusting way the dark head dropped onto his shoulder. Reed expelled a slow breath.

“I really thought she was going to shoot the captain,” he marvelled. “The way she looked at him… I’ve never seen such absolute _hate_. It was as if she’d gone completely…”

“Insane?” Tucker supplied softly, tilting his head enough to feel the kiss of dark locks against his cheek when Malcolm nodded.

If he objected, the habitually uptight lieutenant’s body language wasn’t showing it. “I thought she was turning into one of _them_ ,” he murmured. “Christ if that’s what ancient Vulcans were like, it’s a miracle they ever survived to become patronising bastards! Sorry. Probably shouldn’t say things like that.”

“You say whatever the hell you want.” It felt good to be this close, Trip noticed idly. As if in giving comfort – or trying to – he was getting it right back. “You heard what caused it?”

“Exposure to the substance we’re supposed to be plastering all over the bloody ship. Just our luck!”

“She’ll tell the cap’n to leave her behind.”

“And he won’t do it. Can’t say I’d be any different, mind. I know she’s a Vulcan, but she’s our Vulcan.”

“I’ll hand it to her, she’s been loyal – right up ‘til she pulled a gun on the cap’n.”

“Extenuating circumstances.”

“You got her out in time. That’s what you did, Malcolm. You saved all the lives that could still be saved.”

“And that means I can forget the hundred and forty-odd demented zombies wiped out in an enormous fireball?”

“It means you should remember what would’ve happened to your friend – always assuming she’d lived long enough, being trapped on a broken-down cruiser surrounded by all those zombies.”

Reed’s shudder ripped right through him. “I know you’re right, Trip – logically, it was the only way out. It’s like those colonists who died when the Suliban…”

He’d been storing that one up a long time, Tucker gathered. “You did everything right that time too. Those ports were sealed.”

“If we hadn’t been there, more than three thousand lives wouldn’t have been lost.”

“And Silik would’ve found another place t’ try and screw our mission.” T’Pol – under normal circumstances – would be so much better at this logical shit, but Trip doubted his man would ever open up to her.

_Or anyone else. Now why do I feel all warm and fuzzy about that?_

Silence yawned ahead of him and for once he didn’t run his mouth off with garbage for the sake of filling it. He tightened the arm still resting around Reed’s shoulders, drawing the smaller man closer; dropped his cheek fully onto the glossy sable crown. “Sorry,” Malcolm offered. “I’m being ridiculous.”

“You’re being human, Mal.” He’d never heard anyone else use the nickname and it gave him a kick every time Reed accepted it. “And – aw, damn!”

He couldn’t help it. Right when he was at his most vulnerable the armoury officer lifted his aching head and gazed up at him with his whole heart in those ocean-wide Atlantic eyes. If he hadn’t done that, Trip knew he’d never have just… gone with his gut.

He caught the strong jaw with gentle fingers. Slid them along, slowly savouring the rasp of a day’s stubble growth against work-roughened skin. And as Malcolm’s eyes got even wider, the storm clouds in their depths parting with a shaft of silvery sunlight, the unexpected words simply fell off the end of his tongue.

“Malcolm? Would you be really pissed if I kissed you about now?”

The tiniest tongue-tip slipped out to moisten the lieutenant’s lips. “I don’t think so,” he breathed. “I mean… no. No, Trip, I wouldn’…”

It was almost virginal - the least sexually charged caress of his whole life - but Trip Tucker felt its reverberations trickling all the way down into his boots. Malcolm’s lips lay soft and undemanding beneath his, so much fuller and warmer than they looked, and if he wasn’t exactly kissing back, the Brit wasn’t fighting it off either.

No, Trip amended a second later as the slim form against him convulsed in a shuddering sigh. He was welcoming it.

Slow and steady, he butterfly-kissed his way across the perfect bow of Reed’s supple top lip, tasting the faint tang of peppermint on the exhalation that preceded him. The cabin around him blurred out and he let his eyes close, focussed on the rightness of the sensation that spread from the smallest of human contacts. Malcolm’s sigh rolled over his consciousness like distant thunder.

And the magic skein snapped.

Tucker’s head jolted back. Apologies, explanations, disclaimers clogged the base of his throat and all the while Malcolm nestled against his side, his sharp-angled features softened by the sweetest peachy flush, a picture of relaxation.

Somehow, that just wound Trip up more.

“I’m sorry, Malcolm…” he stumbled. A peremptory hand killed the words on his tongue.

“Please, Trip. Don’t.”

_He’s not mad at me._

_He wanted it._

_Sonofabitch!_

“Be sorry for those dead Vulcans. Or T’Pol, if you must. Just – _please_ don’t be sorry for kissing me!”

Fear. Panic. The old fight-or-flight responses. He could feel them getting their grip on every muscle in the fine, firm figure at his side. _Maybe I can hug them back out?_

“Ah’m not sorry, Malcolm.” That got a sharp intake of breath and a tentative peek beneath ridiculously lush dark chocolate eyelashes that turned Trip’s battered heart right over. “’cept for kinda springin’ it on you…”

“I think you’d know if I was mortally offended, my dear.”

The old-fashioned turn of phrase brought bubbling lava to both cheeks. “I won’t pretend I’m not a bit… discombobulated, obviously,” Malcolm clarified awkwardly, shifting away just far enough for the loss of his body heat to strike a physical blow. “I never thought – I mean, you’re straight!”

“Mostly.” _Okay, that went well_. The Brit was nodding, rubbing his chin contemplatively. As if the word explained everything.

Maybe it did, Tucker realised, aware of the kind of warm wash he’d not felt since his last Florida sunrise. _If Malcolm’s bi…_

“I’ve usually dated women too,” he said. Trip snickered.

“Yeah, I remember the list,” he teased. Reed pupped his lips at him.

“Well I didn’t want to spook you with a farewell to Josh or Marco from our icy tomb,” he pouted. The blond head wagged.

“Maybe we’d ’ve found a way ‘f warmin’ each other up if you had, Lew-tennant,” he drawled, pleased to be answered with a laugh and a punch to the arm. “I’m not - I don’t wanna push things here Malcolm, but you mean a lot to me. You’re more than a friend. You know that?”

He watched, fascinated by the way the man’s shoulders seemed to broaden, as if he were breathing in sudden, unexpected confidence. “I know I’d like to be, if that counts?” the brunet ventured, all but hawking his head up with a tractor beam to meet his companion’s anxious gaze. Tucker stretched, drawing Reed willingly back into the crook of his arm. 

“That counts for everything,” he said solemnly. “Hell I’m only really me when I’m with you, Mal! I don’t have t’ pretend or hide anything, and being with you – well, it makes the universe seem _right_ , even when I know it’s all gone fuckin’ wrong. Can I kiss you again?”

Annoying to the last, Malcolm pretended to consider the proposition. “If you’d like,” he said eventually. Trip lifted his free arm, fully encircling the other man.

“Ah’d like,” he confirmed over Malcolm’s lips before closing the pledge in with his own.

The second kiss remained chaste somehow, even when a pair of dextrous pale hands came up to cradle the back of a dark blond head and a body limber and supple as any gymnast’s squirmed its way wholly onto Tucker’s lap. Nipping and nibbling, each man mapped the fullness of the other’s lips while time stopped and the importuning universe faded away. Trip could have stayed there, just holding the man he loved, forever.

“The man I love.”

The second the words left his brain they found their way along vocal chords rendered rusty with lack of breath. “That’s what you are, Malcolm Reed,” he marvelled when the armoury officer, blinking owlishly, would have questioned. “Sonofabitch! How come I didn’t see it before? I’m in love with you!”

“Don’t go rushing to conclusions.” Small worried furrows cut between well-marked eyebrows and all unbidden Tucker’s hand elected to go smoothing them away. “It’s been a tough few months – you’ve been under enormous strain…”

“Which would’ve killed me if I didn’t have my Malcolm.” He had no right to the possessive phrase, but with the man actually snuggling in his lap Trip figured he could risk it. “We’re going through hell, all of us and like the cap’n’s been sayin’ all along, the only way we’ll pull through’s together. I’m not gonna push you here, Mal. Hell I don’t even know how you feel about me…”

“I’d have thought it was fairly obvious, even to an oblivious redneck,” Reed cut in wryly. Trip felt his mouth open wide in that weird, unfamiliar thing called a smile. _Funny how I mostly do that around him._

“Okay, you’ve not tossed me out the airlock, so you can’t be too mad,” he conceded, starting a little at the ticklish sensation of a syrupy chuckle cascading down his throat. “But what I’m trying to say is…

“I’m not gonna be jumpin’ your bones here, Malcolm. I’d like us to be together as a couple someday but there’s no rush, and I’d hate for you to feel pressured…”

“I’d only shag on the first date if I wasn’t looking for a second: and I don’t suppose we’ve actually _had_ a date yet.”

“There’s always Movie Night?”

There, Malcolm considered, was the Labrador-pup eagerness that first caught a habitually cautious eye before Enterprise had even left spacedock. “Captain’s given the go-ahead?” 

“On condition I don’t put _Casablanca_ in for the first month,” Trip agreed, melodramatically downcast at the sacrifice. “So – what do you say? You gonna be my date next Tuesday?”

“I’d be honoured, Mister Tucker.” Giddy, Malcolm pressed a bashful kiss to the sweet upturn of his new boyfriend’s nose. “And I’m in love with you, in case you’re interested. Have been for ages in a rather hopeless, Victorian-governess kind of way. Oh, God!”

“Malcolm?” Large, callused palms framed his face, neatly covering, Reed suspected, the shocking colour he felt staining the cheeks. “You’re not gonna cry, are you? I can’t stand seeing you cry!”

“No, Trip.” His laughter was edged with hysteria and that shook Reed back to his senses. “It’s just – oh, how fucking ridiculous are we? All this time I’ve been pining and you – you’ve been completely bloody clueless, haven’t you?”

“That’s me. Denser than Jupiter, darlin’.”

“Darling,” Reed echoed, his precise accent lingering on the alien term. “I could get used to that.” 

Trip adopted his best beagle-after-cheese look. “I promise not t’ use it on the bridge.”

“Airlocks do remain available,” Reed hesitated, steeling himself for the next word. “Love.”

Had Malcolm experienced the same sudden drop to zero-g Trip wondered, holding his breath until his head’s joyous spin slowed down. “I’ll keep it in mind,” he pledged huskily. “Can I – damn!”

“Whatever it is – yes.”

The trust in the casual words awed him to the edge of tears. “I don’t want to be alone tonight, Malcolm, and I don’t want you to be either. Can I stay?”

“Of course.” Only hearing the words did Reed realise how desperately he needed them and he grinned cheekily at his companion, aiming a well-polished toecap at the Southerner’s near boot. “As long as you’re taking those off before you get your feet on my bed!”

“’f course.” They were both grinning like fools and Tucker guessed neither of them gave a shit. “I meant it though. You’re a mighty attractive man and someday I’d like…”

“So would I Trip.” A single fingertip ghosted over his lips and Trip puckered up against it in heartfelt thanks. “But we’re more than just that and I wouldn’t want it – we’re not ready. I’ve had a hell of a day, what with demented Vulcans chasing me ‘round a collapsing starship and my First Officer turning into a murderous, paranoid nutter. I really need a cup of cocoa, an early night, and a cuddle.”

The blond was up off the bed in a trice. “I can handle that,” he said confidently, stretching for the kettle. “Wanna take first turn in the bathroom?”

“I’ll make the drinks – you first. There’s a spare toothbrush on the top shelf.”

Minutes ticked placidly by while they readied themselves for bed, falling instinctively into the comfortable silence of long-established lovers. Trip took care to fold his uniform neatly and tuck his boots under the desk before slipping between the sheets – _Malcolm’s sheets_ , he reminded himself – in his blues. Only when the lieutenant stepped out of the bathroom wearing nothing but his snug standard boxers did the meaning of those words sink in.

“Trip?” One foot lifted to take his next step, Reed hesitated. 

“Yeah?”

“”You’re gawping.”

“Just admirin’ the view, Mal. You, uh, you usually sleep in your shorts?”

“Oh!” Trip could have gone cross-eyed trying to watch the two-way progress of the fire that started at the base of his man’s throat. “I can find some pyjamas if…”

“Don’t you dare!” He’d only just realised he was in love with the guy Tucker acknowledged, but these baser emotions had been bubbling away for as long as he could remember. With an exasperated _tsk_ he lifted the covers and patted the mattress at his side. “C’mon in, I’ve been warming the sheets for y’.”

“And a lovely job you’ve done of it too,” Malcolm approved, shuffling on the extreme edge of the mattress. “Whoops, sorry!”

“Malcolm, if you’re going to be apologisin’ every time your ass touches my belly, we’re gonna get no sleep tonight.”

“It’s been a long time, and no, the other night doesn’t count. We were both dressed…”

He didn’t have to crane his neck to know the engineer’s eyes were rolling. “This is supposed to be makin’ us feel better, remember?” Tucker protested. “So close your eyes, relax dammit and let’s get us both some fucking sleep!”

*

Seven whole hours later Malcolm Reed opened his eyes feeling fully refreshed for the first time in months. Heat emanated from the presence against his back, spreading its way through to his core; the solid weight of an arm rested on his hip. “Morning,” he mumbled.

“Hey, Gorgeous.” Something ruffled his hair – Trip’s other hand he identified, the pleasant sensation in his belly shifting downward. “’slaright, the alarm’s not gone yet, you just lay back and feel it.”

“Feel – oh.” His body understood – as had Tucker’s, he gathered – and reacted naturally to the solace of a companion’s warmth. “Are you…”

“Slowly gettin’ a grip,” the Southerner assured him, not helping Reed’s predicament with the lightest of kisses to a bare shoulder. “It’s a good way to wake up, Mal. I could get used to it.”

“I think I’d like that – embarrassment aside.”

“Don’t feel bad. It’s just our bodies saying this is right.” Still, showing a sensitivity few others would expect, Tucker backed off, giving the Englishman time to regain full control of his extremities before rolling to face him on the pillow. “It’s a _long_ time since I’ve woken up feeling… like that.”

“Me too.” His obstinate penis belatedly acknowledged the commands firing down from his skull and Malcolm smiled, allowing himself to revel in the luscious sensation of waking to find himself warm, secure and loved. “Think we can risk a proper hello now?”

“Ah thought you’d never ask!”

Ten minutes later, fully clothed but with his hair on end and his mouth feeling pleasantly bruised, Trip Tucker stumbled over his best friend’s threshold and sauntered down the hall to his own with a song in his heart. 

He wasn’t alone. He had a best friend who, someday soon, would be his lover too. And until that happened he could laugh and cry in safety, kiss for comfort when he needed it and hold onto Malcolm Reed whenever Mal wanted to hold onto him.

Life – whatever the Xindi might want to say about it – was pretty damn good after all.


End file.
